


The Dangers of Trying Magical Steroids and Other Dumb Ideas

by polyxena_chatoyant



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Reality, Amnesiac Harry, Dwarves, Elves, Fae & Fairies, Gen, Gender Confusion, Gender Identity, Graphic depictions of violence - Freeform, Nonbinary Harry Potter, Other, POV Third Person Limited, Post-Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Quests, Sirens, Swords & Sorcery, Temporary Amnesia, World Travel, gender neutral harry, graphic depictions of gore, i'm doing too much world building for this i might as well make an actual mmo, not touched upon much but yeah that's my decision on him, so basically harry is the mmo protag with no memory, taking inspiration from various MMORPG's tbh, trying to think of anything else i need to tag but i'll just add it later i guess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-15 11:34:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29683341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polyxena_chatoyant/pseuds/polyxena_chatoyant
Summary: No memories, an unfamiliar body, a mysterious deal made with a deity - Harry would just like to find a good inn for a nice night's sleep, thanks.
Kudos: 5





	1. Just A Boy

**Author's Note:**

> So my brother got me really into MMO's recently, and I can honestly never get The Witcher out of my mind, so since BDO is shut down for the day I decided I might as well pass the time writing a bit of a new fic. I'll be spending the entire day just writing, so let's see how many chapters I can get out. Unbeta-ed and hot of the press.

The streetlights outside Harry’s window barely reach through his curtains, casting a soft glow across the far wall and door. Even with such little lighting, Harry can make out the furniture in the room, from the rickety desk to the wardrobe. His eyes have adjusted to the lighting, having laid here in his bed almost all day, unmoving. The pillow under his cheek feels almost like it’s become part of his face, and he thinks about rolling over before deciding not.

Today is a bad day. He’s had nothing  _ but _ bad days since the end of the school year - since Sirius’ death. Whenever he closes his eyes to sleep, all he can see are the dark hallways of the Department of Mysteries, the flapping of the Veil, the look of shock on Sirius’ face as he falls through. The cackling smile on Bellatrix Lestrange’s face. 

The Prophecy runs over and over again through his mind. Neither can live while the other survives.

Harry blinks slowly. It still doesn’t feel real, and yet at the same time, the realness of his situation feels like a crushing weight keeping him pressed to the mattress.

Sirius couldn’t survive. His parents couldn’t survive. Cedric Diggory couldn’t survive. How in Merlin’s name is Harry supposed to?

For the first time in hours, Harry rolls over. The blanket drags with him, trapped under his side and a breeze drags across his newly exposed back. Harry shivers, and violently tugs the blanket back into place. Somewhere in the house, a fridge door shuts. Dudley, most likely, sneaking in some food around Aunt Petunia’s strict diet in the middle of the night. 

Harry’s stomach rumbles. When was the last time he ate?

As if in a haze, Harry pushes himself up and out of bed. His arms tremble slightly, but his legs are solid as he shuffles towards the bedroom door. It opens easily enough. Uncle Vernon had taken one look at Harry when he arrived home from Hogwarts and hadn’t bothered to put the locks back on. Harry would wonder how bad he must’ve looked, but he didn’t much care. 

The hallway is darker without a street light to give any glow, so he pauses in the doorway, blinking, waiting. Slowly his eyes adjust, and he steps lightly through the hall to the stairs. It’s instinct to avoid the creaking ones. The downstairs hall is lighter, the kitchen light under the doorway giving Harry a pause. He thought for sure Dudley would be back in his room by now. Harry doesn’t want to interact with his cousin.

Before he can turn around, though, the kitchen door swings open, showing Dudley. He’s holding half a sandwich in his hands, mouth full, and freezes at the sight of Harry on the steps. Harry eyes him tiredly; Dudley’s been off ever since the Dementor attack, and he’s no longer sure what his cousin will do.

Dudley and he stare at each other for a few silent moments, before Dudley roughly swallows what’s in his mouth. 

“Tea?” he offers, jerking his head back towards the kitchen.

Harry’s brow furrows slightly. What? “Tea?”

Dudley nods, “Tea. You look like you could use a cup.”

Before Harry can reply, he’s turned around and the kitchen door swings shut, leaving Harry alone in the hall. He doesn’t move. In the kitchen, the sound of Dudley setting up a kettle can be heard.

Well. Harry  _ had  _ wanted to eat. He can think about the weirdness of Dudley’s actions later.

Stepping off the staircase, Harry pushes into the kitchen and squints in the blinding light of the fluorescents. Dudley stands at the stove, turning the heat on. Harry goes past him towards the fridge, pulling out some lunch meat and cheese. 

Surprisingly, Dudley doesn’t make much conversation throughout the process. Harry manages to make an entire sandwich and sit down at the table before the kettle’s done, which Dudley quickly lifts off the stove before Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon can hear it. 

It’s not until Dudley is sat across from him, his last half of a sandwich on a plate, the two of them staring into their teacups as they wait for it to steep, that his cousin finally speaks again.

“I’ve been meaning…” he pauses, chewing on his lip. Harry glances up from the teacup at Dudley’s face; he looks constipated. “Those things. Last summer. The demented-”

“Dementors,” Harry interrupts. His voice is scratchy from disuse.

Dudley tilts his head in acknowledgement. “Yeah, those… I… Just…”

Harry waits. He still doesn’t know quite what Dudley wants. Perhaps he wanted to know the gory details of what could have happened, maybe he wants reassurance that it won’t ever happen again. Neither answers would make him happy, Harry thinks.

“Thank you.”

Harry’s head jerks up, and he stares at Dudley, who stares back. Harry closes his mouth, which had fallen open in surprise, and blinks. That… wasn’t what he’d expected. At all.

“I would have died,” Dudley continues, like he hasn’t just pulled the rug out from under Harry on his world view, “if you hadn’t been there. So… thanks.”

Harry swallows, heart suddenly sinking; he’d been able to save Dudley, but not Sirius. Not Cedric. Maybe not even himself. He looks down at his cup again.

“Don’t worry about it,” he murmurs, pushing the cup away from him. “It was the right thing to do.”

He wasn’t very hungry anymore, Harry thought with a glance at his still uneaten sandwich.

“Exactly,” Dudley says, equally as quiet. “It was. But, I don’t know what I would have done in the same position- no… I know. I just…” He’s silent, and Harry wonders if the conversation is over, if he can go back to his bedroom and escape the Dursley Twilight Zone.

Dudley’s mouth opens again. Apparently not.

“We haven’t been good to you.”

Harry puts his hands in his lap, to try to hide the way they’ve curled into fists. This isn’t what he wants to talk about. It’s, in fact, one of the furthest things from what he wants to talk about. He’d rather talk about Sirius’ death than this.

“I… I  _ want  _ to be good to you, a good cousin,” Dudley continues, and Harry barely pays attention. “And when you came back this summer, like… I just thought. Is there anything I can do? I don’t know what happened, but-”

“My godfather was murdered,” Harry interrupts. If Dudley wants to know what happened this past year, and it’ll get him to shut up about- about  _ family _ and  _ being good _ , then Harry will tell him. 

Perhaps just not nicely. 

“The man who killed my parents, Voldemort,” he almost expects Dudley to flinch, and it gives him a moment’s pause when he doesn’t before Harry remembers, oh, right, Muggle, “He’s back. And one of his followers murdered Sirius. Because of me.” Harry’s fists clench even tighter in his lap, and he stares at his own white knuckles. “It’s  _ all _ because of me.”

It’s like a dam bursting. Everything Harry’s been thinking about the past month, every memory he’s gone over trying to find a way he could’ve done better, saved someone - it spills out his lips in cold, hard sentences, with jerking stops and starts. Umbridge. The DA. Snape’s Occlumency ‘lessons’. The dreams. Mr. Weasley. The Department of Mysteries. Sirius. The prophecy.

By the time Harry stops speaking, his voice is so rough it hurts, and his tea has gone cold. There’s nothing more to say, though, so he drinks it down in a few gulps anyways before taking a large bite of his untouched sandwich. Anything to give his hands something to do. 

Dudley’s brows are furrowed, his face scrunched as he thinks. It looks like it hurts, to Harry, and he almost regrets saying anything at all. It’s not like Dudley can do anything about his problems. He certainly can’t kill Voldemort for him. Hell, Dudley was even less likely than Harry to be able to kill the monster of a man.

“Isn’t there some- some magic something that could make you stronger?” Dudley asked, face still screwed together. “You’re just a kid, why are they expecting you to be able to fight that Volde-mold-guy?”

Harry scowled, “I wish I knew. And if there is something that could make me strong enough, no one has said. Dumbledore thinks it’s  _ love _ that will help me win.”

Dudley snorted, “Oh yeah, love is what knocks a bloke’s lights out, not a fist.”

Harry couldn’t help the huff of amused air leaving his lips, and Dudley smiled slightly before it fell back into a more serious expression. 

“Seriously, though,” he said, leaning forward towards Harry. “Mold man is super strong, there isn’t even, uh…” he paused, thinking, “I dunno, magic steroids? Anything?”

Harry got halfway through a scoff before pausing.

Maybe it was the cold tea, but that had some merit to it.


	2. Pulling A Hermione

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dudley and Harry search for "magic steroids" of a sort, starting with looking for a library.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha, bdo won't fucking work for me so here's a chapter i finished really quick to post.

The car door slammed shut behind Harry as he stood on the street corner, hands stuffed into his pockets and head tilted low to peer up around him anxiously. People passed by in their work clothes, likely all heading back from a lunch break; it was early afternoon on Charring Cross, so it wasn’t long before the taxi he and Dudley had taken here was commandeered by another pedestrian looking for a ride.

Dudley clapped a hand onto Harry’s shoulder, shoving his wallet back into his pocket. “Alright - where to? You said this place was here, but I don’t see it.”

Harry quietly shrugged Dudley’s hand off his shoulder and nodded towards the Leaky Cauldron. “You won’t be able to see it until we’re inside. Now come on, we should hurry.”

This whole trip felt like a fever dream. Last week’s conversation had slipped his mind for days, forgotten as something he thought he’d just leave to the middle of the night, before Dudley had snuck into his room early this morning to wake him up with a plan to take a taxi to London. 

_ “Well, don’t you people have libraries?” Dudley asked. “You could start there.” _

_ Libraries, Harry thought; if only he could ask Hermione for advice. “I’m not sure. The only place I could think of to look…” _

The fact that Dudley had even remembered the mention of Diagon Alley and it’s location astounded Harry. As did the usage of most of his summer savings for a single taxi trip. Harry would have offered the Knight Bus, but he didn’t want to be recognized. It would be hard enough to get Dudley to go under the radar.

And yet. Here they were, walking up to the Leaky Cauldron, two robes stuffed into Harry’s bag to change into inside. He was taking his muggle, magic-hating cousin into London’s main magical shopping district. During a magical civil war. 

Before Harry could think more on the ridiculousness of his decision, he pulled Dudley inside what must have appeared to him to be a solid wall but was in fact the rickety doorway to the Cauldron.

Dudley stumbled to a stop just inside as Harry let the door fall shut behind him. There were wizards lining the bar, hags in a back corner chatting, but for the most part the Cauldron was much emptier than Harry had expected it to be. Perhaps because it was during work hours? 

A few of the wizards at the bar glanced over, and Harry grimaced. He glanced at Dudley’s gobsmacked face for a moment before grabbing him by the arm and dragging him quickly through the pub towards the back door. Once they were in the alley behind the Cauldron, the door shut safely between them and the patrons of the bar, Harry opened his shoulder bag.

“Here,” he said to Dudley, “Put this on.”

“A dress?” Dudley said, bewildered but amiable, pulling it on over his head. “I can’t believe I never noticed this building before…”

Harry shrugged, already straightening out his own robes over his street clothes. “Notice-Me-Not charms, I think. Muggle repellent, maybe. You wouldn’t’ve.”

To Harry’s surprise, Dudley simply replied, “Cool. Now what?”

Harry handed him a cloak to tie around his shoulders, tying one around his own, “Now, we wander. I don’t want to ask for directions, so we’ll just try to find a library.”  
Dudley looked confused as he tied the knot around his collarbones. “Wander? In this alley?”

Harry smiled, pulling out his wand. Perhaps, if Dudley were really warming up to magic, he’d find this cool as well. “Not any alley - Diagon Alley.” 

He tapped the necessary bricks, and the brick wall behind the Cauldron opened up. Dudley gasped, and Harry watched his face go wide eyed in awe. Nostalgic, he wondered how he must’ve looked to Hagrid all those years ago. 

And then he glanced into the alley itself, and frowned.

It was much emptier than he’d thought it would be. Most people walking around had their cloak hood’s up, their heads down, and rushed from place to place. Where were the crowds? The hustle and bustle?

Harry pulled his hood up and motioned for Dudley to do the same, and stepped into the alley. He walked briskly, glancing around at shop names and the people walking. They were all doing the same, though no one could get a clear look at someone else’s face. 

“Harry?” Dudley said, and Harry looked to where he pointed. A newspaper stand. “Is that about you?”

The headline of the Daily Prophet read  **_He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named Returns; A Prophecy Regarding the Boy Who Lived?_ ** and the picture beneath was of the Ministry atrium, destroyed, Dumbledore and Voldemort locked wand-to-wand. Harry looked away, pushing Dudley’s hand down, and kept walking.

“Don’t,” he whispered. “We don’t want to be recognized. Let’s keep going.”

Towards the end of the alley, there was one shop that wasn’t following along the dark and dreary mood the rest of the alley adopted. It was bright orange and purple, and Harry had to stop and stare.

Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes. It must have been the shop Fred and George were planning. He hadn’t thought about it since the day he gave them the Tournament winnings, but clearly they had put it to good use. There were sparklers and fireworks, a sign that made fun of Voldemort - everything the twins were, encapsulated in a store front. 

He desperately wanted to go in, to see the twins, his older brothers in all but blood. But they didn’t have the time, Harry didn’t know when his watcher’s got a shift change, he’d only known it was Mundungus because he’d seen the man taking a nap in a tree, the mad wizard.

They kept moving. They walked to one end and back and still, there were no libraries. Harry was about to throw the towel in on the whole idea, when Dudley nodded over to a sign.

“We could try down there?”

Harry looked at the sign that read Knockturn Alley. He hadn’t been back down there since he was 12, but if it was as empty as Diagon, it shouldn’t matter that much, right?

“Alright,” he said, “but stick close. Knockturn’s more dangerous.”

Dudley nodded his agreement, and the two shuffled into the infamously dangerous alley. To Harry’s utter surprise, Knockturn was more lively than Diagon, though everyone still hurried to and fro with their hoods up.

They walked forwards into the crowd, Harry keeping Dudley in his vision as they passed hags selling children’s bones, periodically checking store fronts. There were no libraries at all, it seemed. How strange, Harry thought. Shouldn’t there be a public magical library? Or was he just looking in the wrong places?

“Bookstore?” Dudley offered, nodding towards a cramped, tall shop building in a corner. “Better than nothing.”

Harry hummed his agreement, keeping the skepticism inside as they walked towards the shop. They might be safer in Diagon, he admitted, but if he were looking for information on magical strength enhancers, perhaps Knockturn would be the best place to start looking in. 

The bookstore was quiet, with a clerk who glanced up from a book at the counter to look at them for a moment before returning to his reading, and covered in dust. For a moment Harry and Dudley stood there, before they separated to start looking through the shelves. 

Book after book, dusty spine after dusty spine, Harry trailed his fingers along the shelves with his head tilted to better read the titles. He hoped that if he did find a book here he’d have the gold on him to buy it. He knew he had a handful of galleons on him, but not more than 20 maybe. These books looked old, and old usually meant expensive. 

He was flipping through the pages on what seemed like a book of magical party drugs when Dudley turned the corner of the shelf towards him, holding a massive book about the same size as his head. 

“Look,” he said, opening it where his thumb was stuck in the pages. “A ritual for power!”

Harry’s insides turned to ice at the words. Ritual. The only frame of reference he had for those still gave him nightmares to this day. 

Okay, so maybe this wasn’t that great an idea, he admitted to himself. 

Harry shook his head, “No, that’s… too dark.”

Dudley glanced back and forth between his eyes for a moment, before sighing. “Alright. I’ll keep looking. You found anything yet?”

“No,” Harry said, already looking back down at the book in his hand. Magical magic mushrooms weren’t something that was going to help him defeat Voldemort, that’s for sure. He shut the book and stuck it back on the shelf. 

They were there for quite a bit, passing each other frequently through the shelves, but nothing of note popped out at them. Harry was about to call it quits when he came across the same book that Dudley had shown him earlier. The one with the ritual for power.

His fingers hovered over the spine where Dudley had disturbed the dust. It was just a book, right? It didn’t talk back, certainly. And if he didn’t use it, he could just throw it away. (Merlin forbid if Hermione found out, though.)

Harry pulled the book down and went to find out where Dudley had wandered off to. He found his cousin looking at what looked like a magical history book.

“I’m ready when you are,” he muttered, sliding up next to Dudley.

His cousin’s head jerked, surprised, as if he’d been sucked into his reading. Another very non-Dudley thing to do, Harry noticed. How much could one person change over the course of a school year? 

“Oh,” he said, blinking. “Uh, could I pay you back if you bought this for me?”

Harry glanced at the title,  _ A Hundred Stories of Our Past: Wizarding World, the 19th Century _ , and shrugged. “Sure.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> looking back at my old writing and then trying to write new stuff... really shows how mental illness effects my productivity and attention span. I literally can't sit at my computer for long enough to write a 6k chapter the way I used to do. What the hell is wrong with me.
> 
> Anyways, lmk what ya'll think of the chapter. I really do love feedback, it helps give my brain a push towards writing more.


	3. Shake On It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry goes shopping and does some fun arts and crafts with Dudley :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter TW: Blood, Knives, Wounds.
> 
> So I've decided to make chapter summaries as correctly incorrect as possible.

Harry spent an entire day reading the instructions to the ritual in his bedroom. He sat on his bed, back propped against the headboard, and flipped through the pages. He even took notes. It was a slow process, with Dudley coming into his room every hour or so with a question on a subject in the book he’d bought. Harry was surprised that Dudley was actually interested in the subject of magical history, having assumed that his change of heart was more so something to soothe the need to repay Harry for saving his life.

Still, he managed to get through the entire ritual in a day. It was going to be costly, that was certain, but Harry wasn’t too worried about his vault. He was actually a tad excited - the ritual required a solid-gold cauldron, just like the one he had wanted to purchase his first trip to Diagon with Hagrid. 

Closing the book, Harry glanced at the clock. It was only eight in the evening, and the sun had yet to set. He glanced down at his notes, where he had also made a shopping list, and wondered if the shops were already closed. Most likely. He’d have to go tomorrow then. Who was supposed to be on guard shift?

Harry rolled off his bed and stepped lightly to the side of the window, peering through the open blinds. The street looked empty, most houses on Privet Drive had their lights on. He knew they were probably eating dinner, as he could smell the dinner Aunt Petunia was cooking. Yet, an empty street didn’t actually mean empty. 

Squinting, Harry tried to unfocus his eyes. This, he had learned, was the best way to spot someone under an invisibility spell. The air around the person would shift, and if you were only just barely looking at it, you could catch it. At first, he had thought his eyes were playing tricks on him, as it was so quick you could brush it off easily. 

And....  _ there _ ! In front of Number Six, beneath the tree next to the sidewalk. Who was it? 

If it was Lupin, the man wouldn’t interact with him. If it was Tonks, she’d maybe throw a candy at him if he got close enough. Mundungus wouldn’t have used an invisibility spell, he would simply sit in disguise down the street or something similar. He hadn’t had anyone else thus far on his “security detail” so he wasn’t sure of any of the other Order members’ habits.

Harry grabbed his shoes by the bed and slipped them on, intending to find out just who was out there. 

Passing through the house, he heard nothing from Dudley’s room, pots and pans clanging together in the kitchen, and he spied Uncle Vernon sitting in the living room nursing a glass of bourbon. Yuck. Harry hurried so that he wouldn’t be spotted by his Uncle, but didn’t bother being quiet about the door. He could deal with the anger when he got home from his walk. 

Outside, the air was hot and moist as he started walking down the sidewalk, his shirt began sticking to his skin from the humidity. As he passed by the tree in front of Number Six, the air distorting in the corner of his eye, Harry turned his head to look at the tree - and got hit in the forehead with something small. Stopping in his tracks, Harry looked down at the ground for the candy. He found it in the grass just off the sidewalk, a plastic-wrapped caramel.

With a smile, Harry scooped it up and started walking again. As he unraveled the plastic to pop the caramel in his mouth, a plan started to form in his mind.

* * *

The next morning, Harry got up before the sun. It would be better to say that he hadn’t ever been to bed. He’d tried to sleep, but after the first nightmare waking him up close to one in the morning he’d decided to simply stay awake. To pass the time, he did homework, and managed to get his summer transfiguration homework finished with. 

At around five in the morning, though, Harry set aside his textbooks in favor of a small folded piece of paper with his shopping list on it. There was a five minute window he would have to get away from Privet Drive once Tonks left and whoever was her replacement showed. He just needed to time it right. 

He put his shoes on, grabbed his robes and a wide-brimmed hat to shove into a shoulder bag, as well as the makeup he’d filched out of Aunt Petunia’s drawers. 

The house was silent as he walked through it towards the backdoor. He waited just outside it, holding the door open to listen. A tell-tale  _ pop _ of trained disapparition sounded, and to Harry it was like a gunshot. He let the back door fall shut, and started sprinting. The hedges surrounding the yard were prickly and scratched, but there was an open space behind them that went down the length of every house on the street and the one behind it. 

Feet pounding on the dew-damp grass, Harry rushed towards the far end, away from where his guard was usually posted, and kept running when it turned into sidewalk. Years of practice with Harry Hunting meant that within 20 minutes, Harry was far enough away that he wasn’t worried about being spotted. 

First destination; the bus stop. Without bringing Dudley into it, Harry didn’t have a ride to London. The bus was for the best, even if it took all the Muggle money he was able to scrounge up on short notice; Dudley didn’t exactly fit in, and Harry didn’t want to deal with sight-seeing. He wanted to get in, get out, and be done with it. It would be hard enough to get past the guard when he got back, and no offense to Dudley, but Harry didn’t want to be slowed down any.

Harry reached the bus stop which was blessedly empty, and sat down. Out of his bag he pulled out concealer and a compact mirror. He tried to hold his fringe up but he couldn’t do that as well as hold the mirror and open the concealer at the same time. Instead, he laid the mirror on his lap, looked down into it, and opened up the concealer then. 

And paused. 

How did concealer work? It looked like a little tube with a soft brush connected to the screw-on lid. Did he just… paint it on?

Shrugging, Harry did just that, smearing it over his scar liberally and capped the concealer. Looking into the mirror, he tried to rub it in. The end result wasn’t exactly good, but it did the job? The redness of his scar wasn’t as visible, and you could barely make out the lines across his forehead.

Good enough?

The sun was rising by the time he had finished, and the early morning bus was pulling up to his stop. Time to go.

The bus ride was an hour long with one transfer to another bus. The first was pretty empty, seeing as it was just after dawn, but the second was more filled, and Harry ended up sandwiched between the window and an old woman bent on feeding him candy. He ate one, but it was sour, so the rest he simply put in his pocket when she wasn’t looking. Nice lady, though.

When he got to the Leaky Cauldron, Harry ducked inside as he pulled out his hat to shove onto his head, tilting the brim down to cover his eyes more. He pulled his glasses off in the same motion and put them in his candy-filled pocket. The Cauldron was emptier, so early in the morning, but Tom could be heard in the kitchen. There was only one other person there, a man at a table with his head laid on his arms, a cup of tea in front of him untouched. 

A little less worried about being spotted, Harry casually made his way towards the back door to the alley entrance. Before heading into Diagon proper, he took off the hat for a moment to pull his robes over his head, straightened it all out, put his hat back on, and continued. 

As Harry was more prepared for the gloomy atmosphere that Diagon Alley had taken, he didn’t pause as the entrance opened but simply rushed through. He matched the pace of the other shoppers around him, head down and feet hurrying. His first stop was Gringotts…

* * *

The one thing that Harry hadn’t thought of, and only realized when he and Dudley had begun setting up the ritual in his bedroom, was the Underage Usage of Magic laws. The realization made him stop in his tracks, and Dudley bumped into his back. 

“What?” his cousin asked, holding a bag of lizard spleens with two fingers like it was a bag of shit. 

Harry opened his mouth to explain - and then closed it. 

In the end, what did the law matter? He couldn’t have his wand snapped if he was dead from Voldemort. This was more important than his wand, or his education at Hogwarts. This was his life. This was everyone’s lives. If he didn’t kill Voldemort…

“Nothing,” Harry replied, moving forward again. “Spaced out for a moment.”

Dudley snorted. “Might not be best to space out right now. I won’t know if we mess something up here.”

Harry nodded, waving his hand like he was swatting a fly. “Yeah, yeah. Let’s hurry it up.”

The cauldron, which had been bubbling a potion all afternoon, sat in the middle of a circle of salt. Along the outer and inner edges of the circle were candles with runes carved into them, and in front of the cauldron was a kitchen knife - the ritual had called for a steel knife, so hopefully stainless steel would do - and a bowl made of solid obsidian. The whole set up took up almost all the free space on his bedroom floor, and he’d made sure to move anything flammable away from the area as best he could. 

There was barely anything left to do. 

Harry took the bag of lizard spleens from Dudley and stepped carefully over the candles and into the circle. Dudley shifted from foot to foot near the door, his brow furrowed. Harry could feel the nervousness wafting off his cousin, or perhaps it was simply his own he was feeling. 

He opened the bag and dumped the spleens into the bowl. Then he reached into his pocket for the lighter he’d picked up at a corner store, and systematically began lighting the inner candles first before moving onto the outer candles in the opposite direction. As he did, Harry could feel his fingers begin to tingle. It felt like when he held his wand for the very first time, and the feeling built up and travelled up his arms and through his body until Harry felt almost giddy.

The nervousness had fallen away from Harry, though clearly not for Dudley who was still watching with a frown. Harry’s limbs felt loose and relaxed, the ever-present tension behind his forehead eased, and for a moment Harry wondered if this was what people with perfect lives felt like. 

Unlike the night in the graveyard, this ritual didn’t require any chanting. The candles did that for him. All he needed to do was finish the potion and cast a bluebell fire into it. 

Harry picked up the kitchen knife, and held it over his arm. The same arm that Wormtail had used. Harry thought it a bit poetic. With careful precision from years of potions class, Harry sliced into his arm, creating a deep cut about an inch long. He held it over the bowl, allowing his blood to drip into the spleens until he could mix them together with his hand.

With bloody fingers and a still-bleeding gash, Harry lifted the bowl and gently slid the entire thing into the cauldron. It sat on the top at first before the obsidian bowl began to sink, and as the potion rushed over the lip and into the bloody mixture, the potion began to fizz and spark. The candles surrounding the circle seemed to grow in strength, the flames growing higher and connecting over the top of the salt circle. Light flickered around the otherwise dark room, and Harry couldn’t tell if the potion was turning red or black but it was certainly shifting.

When the bowl was fully submerged, Harry grasped his wand, smearing blood across the wood. He whispered the spell that Hermione had perfected her first year, and cast a ball of blue flames into the potion. 

He could see it beneath the surface, glowing through the water, but the water didn’t put it out or even bubble. In fact, the surface seemed to settle for a moment. 

The smoke curling off the top of the cauldron became thicker and thicker, curling past Harry’s face and through the room. He could vaguely hear Dudley coughing behind him, but it felt far away and distant.

“Why, isn’t this interesting?”

Harry looked up slowly, as if there was a weight dragging his head down. Kneeling across from him on the other side of the cauldron was… something, someone. It was like looking into the sea in the pitch dark, where you couldn’t even tell where the horizon was, and all the stars were reflected on to the water. Harry knew he was meeting its eyes, if it had any, but he couldn’t tell where they were or even where he was looking.

“What do you want?”

Harry blinked slowly and replied, “I want to kill him before he can kill me.”

The void smiled. “I can do that. I’ll just need you to do me a favor in return. Easy peasy, quick and easy, you’ll be done with it before you even realize.”

There was a brief feeling of unease that swept through Harry before the calm returned.

“Okay.”

The void’s monstrous grin widened. “Shake on it?”

Harry didn’t know what to shake, but he stuck his hand out all the same and-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the longest chapter yet! Nice. I feel like I'm getting back into the groove of writing. 
> 
> Lmk what y'all think!! Comments help motivate me to continue this promptly.

**Author's Note:**

> lmk what y'all think so far. i'm not jumping directly into the fantasy quest aspect of this.


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